Gujjar leader Ramvir Singh Bidhuri ditches Congress , joins BJP

New Delhi: After ditching Congress, gujjar leader and former Delhi NCP President Ramvir Singh Bidhuri today joined BJP along with three NCP councillors in the run up to the assembly polls here.

The four leaders joined BJP in the presence of party President Rajnath Singh and Nitin Gadkari, who is in-charge of Delhi elections.

Welcoming Bidhuri in the party fold, Singh said his entry has “strengthened” the party in Delhi and “no force can stop BJP from coming to power in the state in the next elections”.

Gadkari said in the coming days, several other leaders from different parties would join the party as the people in general are “disillusioned” with the UPA government.

Bidhuri, considered a Gujjar leader, had won elections in 1993 and 2003 from Badarpur constituency in South Delhi.

Interestingly, Delhi Congress President J P Agarwal had announced last month that Bidhuri would join Congress.

The two-time MLA was supposed to join Congress on September 6 but he did not turn up at a function organised for his induction along with popular Punjabi singer Daler Mehndi and four leaders from rival parties.

An embarrassed Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit had claimed that he could not come to the function due to traffic jam.

While joining BJP, Bidhuri slammed the Sheila Dikshit government for “high power and water tariff and the failure of the government to rehabilitate lakhs of slum-dwellers evicted during the Commonwealth Games”.

Attacking the UPA government over the state of the economy and the condition of farmers, he alleged that the government was eyeing the gold in Tirupati Temple as it is planning to mortgage the yellow metal to recover from the economic crisis.

BJP leaders like Vijay Kumar Malhotra and Vijay Goel werepresent on the occasion.

The three councillors from NCP, who joined along with Bidhuri, are Dharamveer Awana, Timsy Kasana and Phholkali Narwaal.